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Q: Why are so many expats letting themselves go?
I am so sick of all these expats looking like porkers or some kind of a big barrel ass. I blame vacation-style eating and consistent drunkery/tomfoolery. And I’m not talking all about people who came here already heavy, but ones who let themselves go once they got here.
Besides the oil, the food here has the fundamentals of being fairly healthy. If cooked by a western person who is light on the oil and salt it can really be part of a healthy lifestyle you know? It’s not like everywhere you go people are eating giant cuts of meat, though white rice is one of the worst things you can eat (it’s so simple a carb, a bowl of rice is nutritionally similar to a spoonful of sugar. Like wonderbread it’s just stomach fat waiting to happen).
I can’t imagine coming here and gaining weight, I have to supplement my diet with a couple cans of tuna just to not lose muscle.
I’m about as anti-assimilation as Expats get, but healthy choices have to be made. If the only western food near you is pizza hut and Mcdonalds, DON’T EAT IT EVERY DAY. Chinese food is super simple to cook, just get some veggies and some meat, chop it up and throw it in a pan. It’s not French gourmet-level cooking or anything.
Don’t go out drinking every night either. I realize there’s not much to do here, but making up for that by drinking all the time isn’t going to help. If you are so bored that you have to get drunk every night, that’s a good reason for you not to be in China. That also relates to peer-group normalization of behavior. If all of your friends live paycheck to paycheck and spend it all at the western bar you feel like that’s normal. If you hang out with people who don’t do that you’ll feel kind of silly about it.
I also think (for western guys) it has a lot to do with sexual competitiveness. For a white man, there will be an acceptably pretty girl that won’t care if you’re in the best of shape because the supply is low relative to the demand. You can really let yourself go here and not suffer the consequences…until you DO go back home and find yourself uncompetitive in the dating market.
Especially for us younger people, we need to spend our time here constructively or we’ll get stuck here forever. Take some MS Office classes online…they’re FREE! Learn web design…also FREE. In my guide to getting out of teaching, I mentioned that you might have to invest a year or two of not having fun all the time to get where you want to be. That’s the difference between people who make it and people who don’t. People who do want to be competitive, people who don’t take the easy way.
The answer is simple-
1)Why do you let yourself go when you are in a bar
2)There is nothing "serious" you can do in China
3)Your experience in China counts little in West
4)China's service industry is at baby stage,all jobs here are too simple and "anybody can do" with little training.
5)Chinese food...gimme a break...chicken,cows are fed more antibiotics than food.
Vegetables grown with toxic fertilizers and water,most of them genetically modified.
However,it will take at least 5-10 years to "see" the impact on your body.
That is the "price" for cheap food in long run.
Everything in China is "short-term"...so if you are in China just take it easy and enjoy.
We come here for a break ,fun and or some different experience.China has nothing else to offer to foreigners ..not even clean air and water.So called ".Chinse Experience"
doesn't mean anything anywhere on this planet(there might be exception).
Doing those serious things doesn't require you to come to China in the first place.
expatlife26:
No that's not true at all and a very defeatist attitude, there are tons of serious things you can do in China and our experience here absolutely counts back in the west, it just needs to be relevant experience to what we want to do in the west.
If someone works on a mutual fund in China that's absolutely good experience that will open doors for your at financial institutions in the west. Put your China experience on your cover letter and absolutely will make you a more memorable candidate. What it WONT do is make up for lack of experience, so like if you come here as a business grad and you have 4 years of ESL on your resume, the China part might make you an interesting person but it isn't going to make you qualified to be a VP.
I'm sending out some feelers now about getting a job back in the states and had a couple very positive phone interviews in the past week and the HR people were very curious about my China experience. Hell I'm not counting my chickens and who knows what will come of it...but I think there is a good job for me back in the US which wasn't there when I moved here, I just have to find it.
YOU might not be doing anything serious. You might not KNOW ANYONE doing anything serious, but thinking that nobody is doing anything serious in China might just be wishful thinking justifying that it's normal to be spending your time here doing nothing serious. Which is exactly my point about group behavior making you think something is normal.
expatlife26:
And no of course there is nothing wrong with going to the bar and it doesn't mean that you've let yourself go.
It's just about moderation. I'll take a few really good drinks a week at a place I really like over pitchers of cheap beer spread out over a few days at the same cost.
WCG:
I think Mark has a valid point. I think the vast majority of foreign experiences in China are more relaxed than serious. I tried to take it seriously at first, and well, I wasn't lucky enough to "work on a mutual fund." Don't say that I didn't try. I'm headed back to the US now after 4 years of, yep, esl teaching and face jobs. So, I'm putting a middle finger up on this one.
expatlife26:
@WCG: Thinking the vast majority aren't serious is just wishful thinking or looking at a very narrow group. Again, you might not hang out with anyone with a serious life or career here, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or are just a tiny minority.
I dunno what the stats are but it's not so one sided. There are probably fewer professionals out in the provinces, though there are some QC people and factory managers, but there are big populations in major cities of engineers, managers, lawyers, analysts etc. Not to mention the thousands of expat entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Remember that only US/UK/CA/AU/NZ people can readily do ESL (though others do of course), but pretty much if you meet anyone from somewhere else they are doing something where they are expected to take it seriously.
When I was a teacher I used to just ask people what they did and how they go there, to figure out how I could do the same. Good jobs aren't easy to get there, but there are out there if you fight for them so no excuses.
That would be a valid observation if you know the fitness of expats before being in China and after a few years in China. Any data to support this ?
Now, let me give you actual data. Take Western nations : in a rough average 35% people are obese there, so you would expect 35% of expats from those nations to be obese. Here's an illustration of my point
You can find similar maps from different studies, pretty much the same picture. So if you see roughly 1/3 of obese expats, it can be explained without involving expat life pattern : people simply bring their eating behavior with themselves.
expatlife26:
But! But! You have to also control for other factors...I'm well aware of the obesity rates in the US. BUT...you have to control for most expats in China being college educated which drops the obesity rate VERY sharply within the US population. In the US, an uneducated person is much likely to be obese than someone with a degree. So, the expected rates of obesity for US expats in China would be much lower than the rate for the US population as a whole.
Spiderboenz:
What you are talking about is more closely related to socio-economic-status than it is to education level.
DrMonkey:
I don't speak only for USA, it's true to an extent to the rest of the Western countries. About education level and obesity in USA, I don't know, so I looked around... Well, even with a degree, it's 1 in 4 people who are obese.
expatlife26:
right it's not like going to college teaches you good eating habits, haha far from it! But healthy food can be pretty pricy.
Again it also comes back to group normative behavior. If you hang out with people who eat an unhealthy diet and are too heavy, you'll feel like it's normal. If your friends have a good salad or a small sandwich for lunch every day you'll think that's normal and probably do the same. If your friends order a burger and fries or something along those lines for lunch you'll likely do the same.
DrMonkey:
Fair enough. But it's independent from the place you live in, no ?
mike695ca:
He made it pretty clear that he WAS NOT talking about people who came to China overweight. Its right in the first paragraph..... But cool picture though.
One question, why do they always make the colors so damn similar?? Why not use contrasting colors? Is canada 20-30% or 10-20%???
DrMonkey:
@mike695ca : Even if he does not mention people who were obese *before* coming to China... Would you agree that it's important to know this, to judge if the expat lifestyle is the culprit ? When I see random people, I don't know since when they are overweight just with one eyesight. But I can count how much obese I see in average. It matches the obesity statistics I pointed out.
For the color scales and charts, there are some conventions. If you want to show one continuous variable, the fashion is to use a gradient. If you want to show differences, you're supposed to use opposed colors, like a gradient from blue to red. Also, you're supposed to pick colorblind-friendly colors. (those colors are colorblind friendly)
expatlife26:
@ mike, it's an MS office thing. Most of the default bar charts or color scale-type conditional formating in excel will use very similar colors that you have to manually change.
I always try to make charts and graphs use different primary colors, the default bar chart is like dark red, red-orange, regular orange or three different shades of blue. Just make it a muted Green, Red, Blue so it's easy to read.
mike695ca:
apparently not color blind friendly enough as no one answered my question. What percent of us canadians are fat asses? haha
expatlife26:
Are you blind, Mike?
It clearly shows that either between 20-30% or between 10-20% of canadians are obese.
Does it really bother you that much?
CharlieB:
Haha, that actually made me laugh. Expat you should focus on yourself, it is the only thing you have any control over. Try not to be too judgmental and don't worry about the west face.
expatlife26:
Haha I know man I was just joking about losing face...
In all honesty sometimes I write things like this just to kinda review my own values and beliefs, practice writing them down in the way I think would be most persuasive to someone who disagrees with me or maybe does agree with me and just needs a little kick in the ass...and also to get some feedback and comments in return.
In general I think expats are usually really smart, open-minded people, much more so than your average person in the west but I think China is a place where it's very easy to fall into bad habits; which can become permanent in the space of a few years. This is a place where a certain level of lifestyle is just automatic for any white person from an English speaking country...but anything greater than that you really really have to fight for, probably harder than back home.
We have nothing coming to us here but ESL jobs and a Chinese girlfriend/wife and those are OK desires to have, in fact it's amazing just how simple it is to live a somewhat comfortable life here. If that is what someone really wants from their life, they're in the right place!
But if you want something else, you can't just coast along on ESL and hope it's going to work out. It won't. And life will pass you by and you'll end up bitter and unhappy. Better to spend your 20s really fighting to see what you can get out of life when you have the energy to do so, and if you don't like the corporate grind you can always downshift to ESL in your 30s and 40s with a little better perspective on things, than to turn 40 realizing you really wanted the nice big suburban home with the 2 car garage afterall...but now it's too late.
So if anyone thinks i'm just some blowhard...that's fine and please just ignore me. I absolutely do use this forum selfishly to discuss and improve my values and narcissistically believe that someone else might benefit from the discussion.
You eat here unhealthy amount of any given chemical or metallic part in your food soaked in oil. If you try cook healthy, you spend significant part of the salary. and when you want go out to run and lose weight, what everything you bring back in your lungs ?
I prefer to stay at my 100+ kg with relative cleaner lungs than tiny cancer-hit dummy.
We cook at home as much as possible, I am using olive oil, wife is forbidden to use the fatty pork, much oil and any msg. it comes better step by step. But really, When I go outside for run, I am short of breath because of the cars&trucks running here 24/7.
expatlife26:
I agree food safety here is awful, but there is a distinction between nutritionally unhealthy and contaminate unhealthy. I can control nutrition, so I make healthy choices there.
Contaminates are a crap shoot as long as we're in China so if that sweet potato I ate as a starch gives me food poisoning that's not something I'm going to lose sleep over, except if the vomiting keeps me up at night...also outside my control.
I don't think eating healthy here is so expensive...veggies are pretty cheap. Fruit can be pricy, but in general you can have a meal that's nutritionally healthy for a few USD if you eat at home.
I dunno, your argument sounds like a cop-out like with Mark_GV. Everything might be contaminated so just eat whatever the hell you want and never exercise because the air is bad. There are indoor gyms with clean(ish) air if the fuckers aren't smoking in there.
mark_gv:
I agree with your points that you should not sit at home if it is smoggy outside.Neither should you surrender to unhealthy food.Yes,there are
"good & serious jobs" for expats .Yes they do exist in China which is
so open to new ideas,opinions .China values only competency of a person regardless of race,color,passport,nationality,connection etc. That is why those position exists.In between,China can't retain its own talentsfor whtever reason.
I need to be more technical while answering your question about exercise things-
1)Yes exercise does help.When you exercise your metabolism increases and so does your oxygen consumption rate.i.e. whatever food you are eating are being transported in and out at much faster rate than before.You are burning more calories and your hormones are stablized.You also need to drink clean water so that your body can get rid of unwanted things..so this is how exercise keeps you healthy in short.
BUT, exercise can offer great benefits only if supplemented by clean nutrition,food and water.Otherwise it will cause more damage than good (in long term).
It is like cleaning your house is good but you can't do that with dirty water.
Having said that,exercise still offer benefits(Even in China),but risks are high..nothing noticeable will happen in 2-3 years.Such molecular damages take years to surface .A unclean food can give you stomach ache but genetically modified food may alter your DNA from inside...I mean there is a possibility.
But good things is it takes at least 5-10 years to make this happen...once it happens it is hard to reverse sometimes.
In China,you must exercise with great caution and care on your nutrition,water and air quality(even during post exercise hours)while doing gym in China.Alos make
sure air quality inside gym is really controlled and clean(people generally don't lie in
in China).
I am not defeatist,I just show you the real picture .This place is rosy but that rose
is made of plastic !
My advice,as a fellow expat friend,grab whatever you can ,as quickly as you can and LEAVE.
Good Luck !!!
Nessquick:
"There are indoor gyms with clean(ish) air if the fuckers aren't smoking in there."
Very interesting, I kind of want to contribute to this, because I'm dealing with this frustration most days.
When I first came (9 months back) I was thinking, right this is perfect, I can join a gym, go 3 times a week minimum, eat simple Chinese food, get experience in teaching and living abroad, do online classes in my free time at work, make new friends with whole different outlooks to those back home. All beneficial to my personal growth.
This all lasted a while, I was really good at keeping this routine going, then some new expats arrived at my city. Now before they came it was real lonely here, I'm talking 2-4 expats in the whole city, so when they came, I had been so bored that I started spending much more time with them, eating out, catching up over milk tea, going for a drink say 1-3 times a week. In consequence, my self betterment has slowed massively I feel. Also, personally, I'm single at the moment, and back home I liked a handful of guys (or at least one seriously all the time) and this was my motivation to keep up personal appearances etc.. Here, I'm sorry to say but I'm not attracted to Chinese guys (the lifestyle etc.) and all the Western guys I know here are in long term relationships, so I genuinely have nobody to impress in a sense, so my motivation to go to the gym regularly and make myself pretty in the morning is low at best.
I really agree with what you've said above, but I'm struggling with motivation, I know hard work pays off, especially when I ultimately leave here, but that end of the tunnel feels like a lifetime away. On the bright side though, I am getting back into the swing of things, albeit slowly.
expatlife26:
I agree it can be tough to find healthy motivation here, so I really sympathize. I came here as a teacher in 2009 and saw pretty quickly all the red flags of what that life tends to lead to.
I dunno if you read my blog post on how I got into a entry-level banking job here from being a teacher (I deleted it about a month ago so I could rewrite some things...and hopefully add a new final chapter about how I used my experience here to get a good job back in the US...WORK IN PROGRESS, FINGERS CROSSED!!)
Nothing personal about you, I'm assuming you are Sarah Michelle Gellar, but I think it's really hard for western girls here unless they are just drop-dead stunning because even an average western guy will have a few chinese girls just approaching him and telling him how handsome he is. Unless he is somebody super-motivated he's probably not going to want to make the effort required to impress a western girl who wants more than just a white man. You would probably feel kind of strange (hell, maybe it even could be a red flag for the guy as well, but is excused by cultural differences) if you went up to an american guy on the street and told him how handsome you thought he was...but that's what you are competing with!
Best advice I can give...just try and find some more "normal" people...expats who have constructive goals instead of just being here screwing around. A lot of my friends when I first started trying to network for a good job were a lot older than me...mid-career professionals, but those are great people to learn good habits and values from (somebody who has been a professional for 20 years is obviously doing something right) and thanks to Nick-at-Nite we've seen a lot of the same shows and can get their jokes. I'm lucky to have two professionals for parents so I knew what was "wrong" (for me and my goals, not wrong if you like it or from any moral standpoint) with the ESL lifestyle.
Best of luck, Slice.
expatlife26:
Hey slice...you know what you can use for motivation? If you make a set plan to move back home in like 6-9 months, you can think of this time as a "transition period" where you don't expect to have any fun or be social...to get yourself looking awesome and being more talented when you DO get home around guys you want to impress.
Get yourself to the gym and just focus on your goal of looking great by February 2015 or whenever the Fall '14 semester is over.
The way I look at it, is that if you're kinda lonely and miserable as it is...going out drinking all the time isn't going to solve that. It's just making things worse in the long run. What WILL help is spending the next 9 months hitting the gym and the online lessons and moving back home looking great and feeling smart. At least take the time you're stuck here to get better, not worse!
mark_gv:
@Slice
no pain no gain....but make sure pain doesn't cause some irreversible damage..
China is a place for material success in "whatever way possible".Be patient..
take it as a journey not a destination...and have fun."
Life is game...you must do everything possible to Win it..there will some foul playing
sometimes,but that is part of the game.
Learn to get motivation from inside...you will never lack motivation.Don't be dependent on others and external variable..they always change like climate changing.
Good Luck !
icnif77:
We should hit Tibet together!? Walk (and sleep some) all the way on the hill, if you want?
slice_999_k:
Haha thanks guys, some good comments! I promise I haven't completely let myself go, I'm just slacking. Setting a goal, like, I want to be healthy and fit by, say, February, is an awesome way to start something like that, and it's definitely on the agenda. I actually just got a bike again this week, and have been using it to go everywhere, so am already feeling the burn.
expatlife26, good luck with getting the job in the US, I did read your blog and you seem very motivated and a hard worker so you deserve this break.
mark_gv, couldn't agree more, motivation is something you must steer and focus, I've just veered off slightly I think.
icnif77, let's do it! Totally up for that haha
icnif77:
My family originated at 'sea level'. Shortly after my birth, we moved to the different, full of hills country. My father started to walk up on the hills, and sometimes he would took me and my sis for the walk, too.
As early as 7Y old, I could never get 'logic' of walking up to the mountain. My Q always was (is): 'Why would one walk up to the mountain, if he/she must walk down to the starting point, after the top was 'breached'?' It seems much easier to me to 'enjoy' the top of the hill from the valley with binocs!
I still don't have right answer! However, I would do anything for the girl!
slice_999_k:
icnif77 haha, I had a very similar upbringing, my dad took me hiking as soon as I could walk pretty much.
I am real keen on adventuring here though! 
Laziness, getting caught up in the expat lifestyle, not caring for whatever reason, unable to cook or look after themselves so eat crappy food all the time...
I'd say some or all of the above. If somebody wants to look after themselves it's not hard, but if you choose to let yourself go that's also very easy to do and some people just like that lifestyle.
Either way, it's personal choice and doesn't worry me what other people do.
In China you you are flanked on both sides
1)You exercise then you push crappy nutrition,water,air ...causes more damage than not exercising
2)You don't exercise....not a a healthy thing (in a clean country)
3)You keep the door,windows open...you smoke for free
4)You close windows,you suffocate..
But I agree,eating crappy fried food should never be a choice...cook at home as much as possible.But it is like I am saying...don't drink vodka...drink some wine or bear as no water is avialble !
Nessquick:
no vodka for me. I duno why, but always after vodka I pissed my pants in a sleep. So its looong time forbiden 
But anyway, yeah. I do excersizing when I have mood. I like cycling in evening, when the traffic is bearable, and my work now assures that I have always some move. when busy, I can walk as many as 10km or maybe more during a shift, stairs and so on. Work place is close to the "beach" so air is better a bit, but is bad place to move with family. its a country side of shanghai a the village style of life with all the dirt and rubbish being throw on streets directly is nothing better 
If you are into fitness like me. (went like every 2 days to gym and had 2h swimtraining every day and competition at the weekend) then it is very hard in china to have good nutrition.
Many of those things that have good nutrition are either horribly expensive or just doenst exist here. Quark is the best example for this, high protein low fat low carbs, impossible to get here. Next points would be almonds, yes you can get them but just a small handful 30RMB thats terrible expensive.
Rice, noodles and potatoes are btw no bad food. Exactly the opposite. High carbs are good to live the day with.
Best meal if you do sports would be 150g noodles + 200g chicken with a small spoon of good oil.
The only good thing i at least get here is oatmeal with milk. Best for breakfast and before you go to bed. (only if you do sports and want to gain some muscles)
expatlife26:
Yeah protein powder can be around 700 a jar and it's likely fake anyway.
On the other hand, peanut butter, milk, canned tuna and whitefish are pretty affordable (where in the west the protein powder is almost always cheaper) and I've had good results maintaining a good level of fitness/build here, though about 10-12lbs or so leaner and lighter than I was in the US. Whether that's good or bad is purely subjective. I think I look fine and don't lose sleep over it.
That said if my goal in life was bulking up this is NOT the place to do it. Nutritious high protein food like salmon steaks are just too expensive to be practical for most of us. I think I would have trouble packing on more lbs without gaining fat as well for that very reason.
dom87:
makes me actually a bit sad, because i hate to be out of shape, even though i m married already.
for me it is pure fun to see the effects of the training. but well that only works out with good food, which is litterally impossible.
protein powder in germany is like 10 euro and last for 1 month. my dad sent me now 4 jars, but wonder if i will get them lol.
i dont even wanna talk about the meat here. Pork is the worst you can eat, beef super expensive, chicken might have some disease and the other white meat i cant even get here
expatlife26:
You speak the truth my friend. But you don't have to be out of shape...just focus on getting leaner rather than bigger. It's a different goal but still makes you look better.
I'm not as big as I was at 21 back home, but i'm a little more defined so I can take pleasure in that aspect of training instead of always pushing for a few more lbs on the bar.
dom87:
I have following problem:
i get thin very fast and I can't train good if i dont eat tons of protein and the right stuff.
had to reduce my weights by like 20%.
i cant get fat, i get thin. But being thin (chinese thin) also sucks 
now i try to use my old nutrition plan and cut things out that i dont have here and try to find others instead. very hard though. Well my wife and colleagues at work looks strange because i always eat the same haha
expatlife26:
I know what you mean i'm kinda the same way, i'll get skinny before I get fat. Just eat a lot of PB and tuna. You should be able to get those things pretty easily.
It's all about mentality and perception.
I go to the gym and try to be healthy because when I was in the military it is simply not a choice because you will die! Someone will take you out because you are a porker and the slowest/easiest target lol.
So I try to think about China like at ANY moment, some guy may attack me or single me out because I am a foreigner. It may or may not be realistic but it keeps my guard up and helps motivate me to stay in the gym.
Because we all know Chinese like to fight fair (1v1) that even motivates me more!
My weekly diet goes like this:
Sunday evening up to wednesday afternoon, I eat healthy with my family. Little/no soft drinks, home cooked, countryside ingredients, spicy and delicious. The women always make more than they can eat, so I finish off the dishes with pleasure. That 'bulks' me up for the week.
The rest of the week, I'm in the city, where I shop for simple things like chinese bread-things (sometimes discounted when I shop after work at 9pm), soft drinks/ milk tea/ice coffee/Snicker/whatever suits my fancy. No big meals; regular snacking.
When I first came to China, i lost a lot of weight in a few months. My wife says I am gaining weight now, but it's hardly at ripcord-lifejacket speeds. I think my stress levels have reduced over the past months, as I've found a measure of stability in my life now. I'm back to my 'normal' weight.
Do "foreigners" actually get fatter here in China? The only thing that happened to me the first year here was that I lost tons of weight. I was a moderately fit guy but ended up reaching a level of skinniness very unnatural for my frame. I was getting 3-4 square meals in me a day and there was no way that was keeping any weight on me. (Granted they were Chinese fried rice type meals with eggs added whenever possible)
I haven't noticed people adding weight over here as much as I have noticed people's health or general appearance taking a turn for the worst. The changes are usually related to heavy smoking or drinking, as well as staying up too late all the time. People get this kind of zombie look to them, brittle and older skin, dirty or wrinkled/ tattered clothes... and drop a bit of weight, meaning clothing becomes even droopier on their body. (Plus few folks have a dryer here to shrink the clothes back down)
The key to keeping your weight here is definitely getting tons of protein powder. One scoop has 20-24 grams of protein usually. Not all powders are created equal... Is protein powder really 700 RMB here? Damn! At that rate its better just to visit Hong Kong and come back with 20 lbs. of the stuff. a 5b of leading brandname product will run about 500 HKD. Still expensive according to our standards, but considering ESL wages are actually pretty high, you should be able to afford that. Isn't 120 RMB the lowest of low for an hourly wage? That's like 4 hours of teaching! For a 1-2 -3 months supply!
Bulking is definitely the wrong decision here xD It's not impossible, you can calculate all the numbers and make your food plans for a really cheap budget. But with the lack of available quality food here, eating that much of the same stuff all the time gets very very dull.
Key to keeping a healthy weight here. Don't mess up the easy stuff. If you can't do that then you messed up your entire day.
The lowdown: Hit eggs for breakfast everyday, along with whatever else you like. But eggs are the cheapest and easiest way of protein in China! I get 5 every morning. Don't worry too much about cholesterol because most studies say that eggs won't make, break, or really impact your cholesterol levels.
If you're really worried about it, fine, hit 2-3 whole eggs and then add some whites in there from others.
Chicken - it's easy to find and still sorta cheap here. Thank god for Tyson chicken. They have slightly questionable business practices in the U.S., which means that in China, they are far ahead of the curb for being dependable.
protein powder. If you can bring a significant load back from your home country or do a run to HK (as I'm not sure about prices in Shanghai) then hit 2 scoops a day. That's 40-48 g already! It's not ideal to depend on the stuff though, your body will be crying for real food if so.
Girls, don't skip out on the protein either! It won't make you fat.
expatlife26:
yeah I forgot about eggs, definitely good source of cheap protein.
Protein powder is overrated...i mean the only reasons to use it back home is because it's cheap and easier, not because it's somehow better. 7 pound jug of generic brand is like $40 at the Vitamin Shop. That's WAY cheaper than Milk, Tuna, Eggs, Chicken Breast etc.
Here the cost structure is different so you're better off bulking on solid foods than powder. The problem is that it takes forever if you don't have someone to cook for you!
jetfire9000:
Agree w/ everything you gotta say ^^ But let's not forget one thing about tuna. It can be dangerous if you eat it TOO much! Not sure about different brands or qualities... but I have an older brother who ate too much of the stuff, and he almost lost all his teeth from a receding gum line (had to do with mercury). Luckily he got it all reversed completely by not eating the stuff as much. He ate tuna once every day.
Yeah, in the States, I only ever hit protein after a workout. Over here, I hit it twice, and *squirm* sometimes three times a day, if my protein count for the day is just too sad. Better than not getting it, I mean..... But yeah, always hate it when I gotta pop that third shake.
Went running the other day and realized that my body will easily pop into that calorie burning mode if I don't try to keep my weight on. People reading this probably think I'm obsessed or something, but I really don't wanna drop back down to my 85-90 KG that I hit when I was just eating noodles and rice. Chinese girls liked version of me the most apparently, but I didn't feel natural like that, plus I was sooo skinny! Everybody that knew me was asking me wtf happened over here that year.
Most of the expats I encounter are around 30 and average build. I can only remember seeing fat expats in the Ikea coffee shop. Maybe the biggest cities have a concentration of fat cats, while expats in the peripheries would give you a different impression.
Let themselves go?
... I've lost close to 25 KG. from 86 to 61
Spiderboenz:
Going from borderline overweight to the optimum weight for my hight isnt exacy what would be considered 'letting go', I think. 1Reaching and maintaining a healthy weight IS the opposote... of letting go.
I remember being young and enthusiastic.
It was just a phase :-]
Umm, I've actually lost a shit ton of weight (unhealthy). I'm about 80 kg. I was 95 kg when I first got here. The Body mass index isn't as accurate as you might think. According to the BMI, most professional athletes are considered overweight. Remember, muscle weighs more than fat. Waist size is a better measure.
How do you get fat in China? I go to China fat-as-hell, and end up losing a lot of weight every time. I don't see how it's possible to let yourself go, unless everyone was doing everything for you.
China is good for me. I don't sit in front of the computer coding 24/7.
Simple people lost their focus and only care about their wants and no one else's.
I came close to doing that but realized i would be hurting myself more than anyone so i shaped up , lost over 100 pounds , now i need a new wardrobe.
better to live healthy than to have to deal with it after it's gone, that is your health. it takes 3 times longer to get what you lost back.
Funny Topic. Well, I have to say, i'm not agree with the author. I'm vegetarian since more than 15 years. I spent 4 years in China and I could say, the most of chinese food are unhealthy and too oiler (same it's tasty). Only steam chinese food like dumplings are other are healthy.
Besides, I think it's because 90% of expats i met in China sucks and living like in Ghetto. They're still leaving like if they were home especially american (they even don't want to learn chinese same if they're in China for even decade for some of them).
So, I could say it really depends how you want to manage your life when you're abroad. What's your aim?
I really let myself go on returning to the U.S. I stopped eating healthy foods, started eating a lot of junk food, etc. Stress + work.
Because it cost less. I also see a lot more fat Chinese people every year. This year I counted 30 very fat Chinese kids. Looking like typical North American kids raised on McD and KFC. Last year I counted 3, The year before :0. Why? Money.
I don't think too many ex-pats let themselves go in the area of food.
Why do so many people pass judgment on others, insisting that everyone but themsleves "better do this, better not do that, shouldn't have done that, etc"?
the expat will compensate for the crap life here by going a bit crazy. they should act more like immigrant who works hard.
Stiggs:
Yes, but some people who come here want to go crazy for a year, then either go home and get serious, or get more serious here.
